The Hat That Mumbles, aka Don Imus, is close to reaching agreement with Citadel Broadcasting (NYSE:CDL) to bring his talk show back to the public airwaves. According to Variety, Imus will spurn the interest of Sirius Satellite Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) to join Citadel's network. The corporation, the third largest radio group in the U.S., owns ABC Radio, as well as a number of web sites and on-line radio stations.

Imus, you will recall, was canned by CBS Radio (NYSE:CBS) for his idiotic 'nappy-haired ho's' remark in reference to the Rutgers woman's basketball team. Ironically, the controversy proved to be a goldmine for Mumbles, who won a $20 million settlement from CBS Radio for improperly terminating his contract.

Variety wrote that, since ABC Radio traditionally chooses its own talent (and I use the word loosely), Citadel's signing of Imus would not guarantee that he would appear on ABC Radio stations. However, given the money that Imus will likely demand, I believe he'll have to run on the radio network in order for Citadel to recoup its investment.

A day after General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) MSNBC stopped simulcasting Imus's radio show, CBS Corp.'s (NYSE: CBS) CBS Radio dropped him as well.

As I posted yesterday, CBS still has the far less polarizing problem of Katie Couric's plagiarizing. But Imus's rapid downfall is consistent with broadcasting's economic model: give away for free content that attracts a big audience and charge corporations a fee to market to those audiences.

CBS's CEO Les Moonves wrapped himself in concern for the challenges facing black women. He said, "There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society."

But as CEO his overriding concern was with keeping his own job -- which means getting CBS's stock price up for Chairman Sumner Redstone. And the Imus controversy caused CBS's economic model to shift rapidly in reverse. Corporate advertisers feared that consumers would stop buying their products if they continued to advertise on Imus's program. So they canceled en masse.

And that loss of advertising made Imus economically unsupportable. The lesson? If other shock jocks on the public airwaves lose their advertisers, they too will see their programs canceled.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns shares of GE.

By now I'm sure you are all familiar with the controversy surrounding remarks made by Don Imus on his radio show, where he referred to the ladies on the Rutgers basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." Amid calls for his dismissal from the National Organization for Women and activists like Al Sharpton, Imus has apologized profusely and received a 2-week suspension from the network. All of this got me to thinking: Would Imus's show be better-suited for satellite radio where he won't subject to the rule of the FCC, and have more freedom to make obnoxious, ill-advised comments that are offensive on a multitude of levels?

Howard Stern, who defected to Sirius for greater editorial freedom (and a few hundred million dollars, had this to say about Imus's apology: "He's apologizing like a guy who got his first broadcasting job. He should have said, "F**k you, it's a joke."